| Re: Later stock stereo; other GM cars compatibility; CD mechanism replacement; etc. |
Subject: Re: Later stock stereo; other GM cars compatibility; CD mechanism replacement; etc. by vis_croceus on 2012/4/23 23:05:07 One of my initial reactions on opening one of these HU was "this is some cool shit!" Now that I've played around with it some - this is some cool shit! The CDM, the cassette unit, the CD unit, and the faceplate are each independent devices that live on the E&S bus. They all auto-identify at startup. You can move them around on the network (e.g., plug the CD into the spot where the cassette was) and all works fine. Although it doesn't like having two of the same device plugged in at once... This is the same E&S bus that in other GM cars is used to talk to external tape, CD, CD changer, onstar, etc. devices. So you should be able to substitute some of those devices or perhaps even add them. Whether the CDM will recognize any class of device is a good question, and of course the faceplate won't have controls for all of them. Back to the original question - I'm pretty sure this means we can use CD mechanisms from other GM cars of the same era. I think 'same era' means stereo systems introduced in the 198?-1994 timeframe. I've found references to "E&S version 1.5" which I think came in with cars introduced after '95, which is why all the aftermarket adapters state they are for '95-up cars. So if 1.5 stuff is not backward compatible, then the possible sources of spare parts are all just as old as our cars. But maybe it helps to avoid the corvette tax. Besides the CD acting up, my other reason for going inside the HU was to try and find a more elegant way of aux input. For the last few years I've been hijacking the audio input to the CDM, which meant a CD needed to be spinning. So there's a bus there we could use - found a few people who have worked on homemade E&S interfaces but all the completed ones I found are for later cars. I probably won't put a lot more effort into this because long term I am going a different route. I am thinking of cutting the power line to the cassette motor and hijacking the cassette audio for now. While opening my CD mechanism for cleaning a tiny spring went sproing and now I have to search the entire workshop for it...  |
